Working with strings in PowerShell is fun, I don’t care what you say. In this post, I’m going to show you how to clean up the strings your code outputs, at least in some situations.

Say you have a variable $fileExtensions which you populated with this command.

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PS>$fileExtensions=Get-ChildItem|Group-Object-PropertyExtension

And, for some reason, instead of the default output which is formatted like a table, I want output presented like this.

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.ps1 file extension:11

.xlsx file extension:3

.dll file extension:1

This is a silly example, but notice that even though there are extensions of varying length (.ps1 and .dll are four characters including the dot, and .xlsx is five), all of the “file extension: <number>” is aligned.

Oh yes look at that goodness. In this example I’m using the -f operator to insert the variables into the string. Let’s break down the new string I’m creating.

{0} and {1] are basically placeholders. The -f operator is going to insert the variables that come after it ($_.Name and $_.Count) into the 0 and 1 spots.

The ,-8 is a formatting instruction. The 8 means that this part of the string is going to be a column that takes up 8 characters worth of space. The negative sign means that the data inserted is left aligned. If I had used “positive eight” it would have been right aligned.

If you’ve used the Azure Resource Manager (AzureRM) PowerShell module much, you may have noticed it may sometimes behave strangely. In this post, I’m going to share one that had me stuck for longer than I care to admit…

I have previously written about working with the ServiceNow API, and I’ve continued to use it since my last post on the topic. One of the things that I find myself doing a lot is using PowerShell to add a work note to an incident. Luckily, ServiceNow has an API that you can use to interact with it and do this (among many other things).

Registration for the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit just opened today. This thing sells out every year so now is the time to start getting approval to attend if you need it, and buy a ticket.

Check out the event brochure for info about the conference. You can use it as leverage to convince whoever needs convincing that you should go. The PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit speaker line up and session schedule is also up right now, and as you’ll see, it’s absolutely stacked. This is also a great chance to meet people who work at Microsoft on the PowerShell (and other) teams, as well as a bunch of MVPs at the top of this field. Make no mistake, this is a crazy good networking opportunity.

There are limited hotel discount codes available, and plane tickets will probably only rise in price as you wait, so get on it if you’re going to come!

As a best practice, as an administrator you should have separate accounts for your normal activities (emails, IM, normal stuff) and your administrative activities (resetting passwords, creating new mailboxes, etc.). It’s obviously best not to log into your normal workstation as your administrative user. You’re also absolutely not supposed to remote desktop into a domain controller (or another server) just to launch a PowerShell console, import the ActiveDirectory module, and run your commands. Here’s better way.

Last week, I wrote a post on the difference between .split() and -split in PowerShell. This week, we’re going to keep splitting strings, but we’re going to try to retain the character that we’re splitting on. Whether you use .split() or -split, when you split a string, it takes that character and essentially turns it into the separation of the two items on either side of it. But, what if I want to keep that character instead of losing it to the split?

Here’s a question I see over and over and over again: “I have a string and I’m trying to split it on this part, but it’s jumbling it into a big mess. What’s going on?” Well, there’s splitting a string in PowerShell, and then there’s splitting a string in PowerShell. Confused? Let me explain.

In PowerShell, when outputting data to the console, it’s typically either organized into a table or a list. You can force output to take either of these forms using the Format-Table and the Format-List cmdlets, and people who write PowerShell cmdlets and modules can take special steps to make sure their output is formatted as they desire. But, when no developer has specifically asked for a formatted output (for example, by using a .format.ps1xml file to define how an object is formatted), how does PowerShell choose to display a table or a list?

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